Was Luis Sarria the real, secret trainer of Muhammad Ali?

Yes, the writer made an obvious mistake. Probably didn’t understand boxing well enough.

Are you saying he got the quotes wrong and when Ali was talking about the things he learned from Dundee he was actually saying Sarria?

Dude, go back to the original post. @klompton2 is quoted verbatim. Nobody made that up but him.

Here it is for people who are peeking in who didn’t see the OP:

Now you tell me, DC, how do you interpret that? To me it says Luis Sarria trained Ali when Dundee was supposedly training him.

And you’ve backed that to the hilt, so how can you say it’s a misunderstanding.

We’re on, what, page six of this and not one quote from a single person saying Sarria was the real trainer while Dundee was “supposedly” training him. Not one named source who even supposedly said it, like something second- or third-hand.

Zero.

To remind you, here’s what Muhammad Ali said. He’s the guy who was being trained, so I’m going to go with his version.

ALI: “He’s one of the best in the world. You see, a real TRAINER, when he gets a real fighter, he don’t have to train him, just COACH HIM ON WHAT TO DO and who he’s fighting and WHAT TYPE STYLE TO FIGHT, what to look for, WHAT HIS WEAK POINTS ARE.

“But to drill you every day on how to punch, I had that when I got to him.”

Which, of course, he said on the Donahue show in the 1970s, so he’s back-tracking on what he said in the 1960s (when it was fresh in his mind and more current) in the article where he cites some of the things he learned from Angelo.

Now how do you take that and conclude, “Sarria was the real trainer”?

Let me try one more time and go at this a different way:

Did Emanuel Steward ever train Lennox Lewis? Is so, does that mean he was there every single day the guy was in the gym from whatever point forward? That he took him through every exercise? Do you concede that he was, for a period, the trainer of Lennox Lewis, yet did not rub him down or supervise his sit-ups?

Did Steward also train Thomas Hearns? Would it change your mind if I posted video of someone else holding the mitts for Hearns? If I posted photos and video of someone else handling part of the labor end of taking him through a workout?

Do you contend that Manny was not in fact ever the head trainer of these men because he did not handle every single facet of every single minute of every single workout every single day? If you do, I guess that means Ali had no trainers because no single person did all of that (not even Sarria). If you agree that Steward did, indeed, train Lewis and Hearns, then exactly what is the ****ing difference?

Bottom line: your boy Klompton stuck his foot in his mouth because, as he has done many times, he decided to post on a thread that Dundee was a charlatan and a fake who couldn’t train a dog to roll over. He’s thrown mud at the guy every chance he gets. What is his beef? I have no idea. But he knows (and won’t admit) that Angelo trained Ali so he had to come up with a conspiracy that it was really his exercise guy and masseuse who was the real trainer because he had to say something when his assertion that Dundee was not the trainer was challenged.

And you’ve spent, what, more than 24 hours arguing to back up Klompton and yet neither of you have come up with a single source.

So do me a favor: read what Ali said and tell me (a) he was lying, (b) he was telling the truth about Dundee’s role or (c) he was suffering from delusions and somehow got Dundee and Sarria confused (maybe just hard of hearing and when the kid asked about Dundee he heard Sarria). At least address what the man who was being trained said.

EDIT: I don’t watch South Park. I can’t get past the grade school animation. Some people tell me it’s really good but it’s not my bag. But I do know that you refusing to acknowledge Ali’s own words, not to mention Sarria’s, makes me feel like I’m banging my head against a wall.

 

I‘ll read it in depth.

Are you declining to address what Muhammad Ali himself said about Dundee’s role?

Is it because you don’t believe him?

 

Boy are you a piece of work.

You want to deny that this is an exact copy and paste of what you posted?

You want to deny that Dundee started working with Willie when he was a high school kid?

Yes, Dundee borrowed from Esnault and the Cubans he came into contact with. Absolutely he did. Probably others neither you nor I are aware of.

Are you saying Dupas and Willie Pastrano fought EXACTLY alike? They didn’t, you should be aware. But they had similarities because they learned from the same two men: Esnault and Dundee.

And he perfected the blending of many styles, and he passed that on to many fighters — and he was versatile enough (go read his words, easy to find) to take what a fighter had and what was natural to him and not try to make every fighter fit one mold.

Guess what: Manny Steward taught a certain style. Look at Thomas Hearns and Hilmer Kenty, two guys he brought up from Day One. But if you look at others, he didn’t try to make them all fight like those guys. He worked with what they had. And if you see his work with Lennox Lewis, you can see elements of that style that fit Lennox. Others who were built and fought completely different, not so much.

Nowhere did I ever say, “Dundee invented a style out of whole cloth that the New Orleans boys copied.” Nowhere did I ever say, “Dundee taught every fighter to fight exactly the same way, in the style he invented and patented.” I said you can see the similarities in style among many fighters he worked with and it’s not a coincidence. I also said, in so many words, that he had a certain style — more movement and combinations, fighting while moving around on the balls of the feet — that he liked to teach. That is what I’d call the Dundee style. You can see it in many fighters he worked with.

I also nowhere on this thread say Dundee wasn’t around for Ali’s camps. I said he wasn’t with him every minute of every day and did not travel with him when he wasn’t in camp. I also say Sarria wasn’t in Chicago between camps when Ali was living there, or in New Jersey. You want to prove me wrong on that?

YOU neglect to mention that you posted exactly what I quote from you above — that Luis Sarria was Ali’s real trainer when Dundee was posing as his trainer “supposedly training him.” Which is 100 percent bull****. I challenged you a half a dozen times or more to produce one single source to back this up. You haven’t yet.

YOU neglect to say that you basically contend that Dundee was not a real trainer, had no idea how to train a boxer, and only attracted fighters to work with him because his brother was one of the most powerful promoters in the business (LOL) and was mobbed up and people basically hired Angelo (while somehow not signing an exclusive promotional agreement with Chris Dundee — why wouldn’t that be part of the deal?) to funnel money to the mob because apparently Dundee’s cut was going to Chris and then was being sent up to the mob in New York (why wouldn’t they just sign with a mobbed-up New York manager instead?).

I’ve cited Muhammad Ali saying Dundee was one of the greatest trainers in the world. And explaining exactly what his role was. I’ve linked quotes to a Sports Illustrated article where a young Ali explains things Dundee taught him — boxing fundamentals — including how to better use the jab. (You contended quite clearly that Dundee never taught him anything.) I’ve cited Sarria explaining how Ali approached him not to teach him or show him anything about boxing, but to give him a rub-down. I’ve cited Ferdie Pacheco and others saying Sarria’s role was conditioning (putting Ali through his calisthenics) and giving him massages. YOU have cited nothing that backs up your contention.

You want to back off it and say this is about Pastrano, and you said many times in the other thread that Pastrano at age 15 was a finished product who had nothing else to learn. Quite the prodigy there. YOU said Pastrano could get no fights in New Orleans (he had five or six already turning pro at a very young age) and that’s the only reason his trainer sent him to Miami — yet I’ve shown you that he already had fights and he continued to get fights in New Orleans when he returned after his first summer in Miami (returning because he went back to finish high school while also fighting pro).

I will challenge you again, as I have and will continue to: Cite a source that Sarria was Ali’s head boxing trainer and not his conditioning/massage guy.

 

Thanks. The link did not work but I copied and pasted a paragraph into the google engine and it popped up (the **** taking out the site name made the link invalid, not your fault obviously).

Here’s my take:

It does indeed say when Dundee arrived in Las Vegas. It is not clear that Dundee was or was not in Deer Lake or New York ... or that Sarria or anyone else went with him to New York for that matter (I can’t imagine him going for a public sparring event and not having Bundini there, but it doesn’t say either way).

So you’re at least partially correct there on the part Dundee played in Ali’s camp for the Holmes fight. Perhaps 100 percent but, again, the article doesn’t really say.

There are two more things: Sarria’s mention, once again, is overseeing exercise. Not sparring, not boxing technique stuff. And in Dundee’s absence it clearly names who oversaw early sparring in Las Vegas and it’s not Sarria.

And when Dundee does arrive, he’s the one making sparring observations and asking things of Ali in sparring. Kind of like ... a head trainer. The other guys obviously stepped aside if Dundee was the one telling Ali that he needed to show something during sparring. And Sarria is not mentioned as having anything to do with it.

I stand by this: Dundee was Ali’s head trainer. Sarria was not.

 

Another instance of Dundee telling what the game plan is, this time for Floyd Patterson:

https://www.si.com/boxing/2015/09/24/muhammad-ali-floyd-patterson-las-vegas

It flies in the face of the idea that Ali never had a game plan (never mind that he would adjust, as fighters sometimes do, or do his own thing irregardless, which also happens and always infuriates trainers) — it is Dundee who is laying it out here.

Now you can suppose Sarria cooked it up and communicated it through sign language or told Dundee how he should fight, but that’s grasping at straws.

Dundee was the game-plan guy for Ali.

 

None of which suggests they didn’t learn anything from Dundee.

Find me the quote that says Willie Pastrano at 15 was a finished product who needed no refinement nor improvement.

Obviously Esneault was a great trainer. And fundamentals are great, they are a foundation from which to learn.

Dundee, as he did with so many fighters, took them farther than they had gotten or likely could have gotten without him.

And Chris Dundee wasn’t promoting their fights all around the country over the course of their careers. Willie fought in New Orleans, went to Miami for a summer with Dundee while still in high school as a four-round guy and by the end of a summer in Miami had advanced to eight rounds. That’s progress.

As usual, you take select facts and then draw from them a conclusion — in this case that Dundee taught them nothing because they had good fundamentals when he hooked up with them and were professional fighters — that is no way supported from the facts you cite.

If your contention is that any trainer who doesn’t take a kid from the first day in the gym to a world championship is a fraud, well, there’s a lot of Hall of Fame trainers who were frauds.

It’s quite common for a trainer to teach someone the rudiments and bring in someone else to further their eduction.

Let’s put your assertions through a quick fact check, shall we?

You say Dupas and Pastrano couldn’t get fights so had to sign with the Dundees. Yet Dupas had 28 fights before he ever fought in Miami and less than 10 of his first 58 fights were in Miami. The vast, vast majority were in New Orleans. Pastrano fought like eight of his first 21 fights in Miami.

In both cases, their early excursions to fight in Miami happened when they were still in high school and Esnault sent them down to work with Dundee during the summer.

You say they couldn’t get 10-rounders in New Orleans. Yet Dupas was fighting 8-rounders there quite often and there were no 10-rounders on the card. He was main eventing in eight-rounders.

It’s quite possible the Louisiana commission didn’t want schoolboys fighting 10 rounds for their own health, as both started quite young, in their mid teens.

Your conclusions, as usual, are not backed up by facts.

I will, however, give you points for your desperate attempt to turn this thread, which is about your statement that Luis Sarria was Ali’s real trainer and that Dundee was only “supposedly” training Ali, in another direction.

You should keep the stuff about Pastrano and Dupas on the other thread, which is about Pastrano.

Now how about you provide a source that Sarria was Ali’s trainer.